Origins of the Vietnam War

            On September 2, 1945, shortly following the surrender of the Empire of Japan in World War II, Ho Chi Minh issued the Proclamation of Independence for the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Ho was a leader in the Viet Minh independence movement since the war and had previously lived in the US, the UK, France, the Soviet Union and China. His proclamation begins by directly quoting from the US Declaration of Independence and France’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen:

            All men are created equal; they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights; among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free.

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of the French Revolution made in 1791 also states: All men are born free and with equal rights, and must always remain free and have equal rights.

            Despite this shared rhetoric, the French had only just regained control of their Indochinese colony from the Japanese, and were not about to let Vietnam become an independent state. What’s worse was that Ho Chi Minh was not trying to establish a new capitalist republic, but rather a communist state, something that western countries found unacceptable. The French authority immediately took up the task of taking down this insurgency, backed with weapons from the United States. Ho’s forces began to mobilize stronger and receive supplies from the Soviet Union, and by the end of the forties a full scale war had broken out. The French sent troops from all over their massive empire to try to quell the rebellion, but after a decisive loss in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu they decided to cut their losses and agree to meet to discuss peace terms.

            The terms were settled in Geneva, Switzerland, and stated that Vietnam would be split in two; the Communists would gain control of the North, while the South would be a republic that would be given the chance to decide a separate future. An election was rigged up by the United States and the family of a man named Ngo Dinh Diem. Diem became the first president of the Republic of Vietnam, and future elections were canceled. The Eisenhower administration’s internal polling suggested that the communists could have won about percent of the vote in this election, and their main concern was keeping the communists out of power – not creating a democracy. Diem’s rise to power brought about resentment from the communists in the south, who began to launch guerilla attacks under the name of the National Liberation Front (NLF, or Viet Cong) on Republican targets. In response, Diem executed anyone he could who was guilty of committing political violence, but it was clear that he did not have the resources needed to fight the Viet Cong on his own.

President Eisenhower shakes President Diem's Hand in 1954.

            In response to the growing restlessness in the Republic of Vietnam the United States under President John F Kennedy began to send over military experts to advise the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). Whereas Eisenhower had sent only nine hundred such advisors, Kennedy sent sixteen thousand. This was accompanied by increased military activity in the Southern Vietnamese countryside, and ARVN often came up short against the Viet Cong in battle. The Vietnamese military high command was growing increasingly impatient with what they perceived as the weakness for Ngo Dinh Diem, as was the administration of the United States. Diem became increasingly difficult to work with, and he called for campaigns that the US did not want to support. In early November of 1963, the CIA authorized ARVN Generals to overthrow and execute Diem. President Kennedy would fall to an assassin’s bullet himself less than three weeks later.